SEE ALL TAGS & MOODS
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
You’ve changed.
You used to be so
and now you’re all
like, you’ve transformed
I don’t know how to describe
it’s like
you don’t like canasta anymore
you text IN ALL CAPS
some ekphrastic evening, this will be both criticism and poetry and
failing that fall somewhere that seems like in between. this both/
and and/ or neither/ nor machine comes in having been touched
It is 2005, just before landfall.
Here I am, a labyrinth, and I am a mess.
queen of great britain and ireland, by her commissioners the
honourable david laird, of winnipeg, manitoba, indian com
first you get the grease from canola buffalo
then you find mystery meat
you must package this in
You wouldn’t fit in your coffin
but to me it was no surprise.
All your life you had never fit in
anywhere; you saw no reason to
begin fitting in now.
When I was little I remember
To Windrim or sycamore
rustle cicada or bark and to Wayne
Let Us Be Fireflies
All day we
practice morse code signals
The ancestors of everyone I’ve let into my body
are gathered in a small room with one window,
no lights. Yes, the room is crowded. Yes, there
are no chairs. Yes, they are talking. Why are we
11 am. Time to wake up.
Muscles sore, jaw clenched, warm light
scattering dreams of violence across
the bedroom. I've chosen a self
I wear a peineta & pin a mantilla to my hair
I want to be Conchita Piquer warning women
about becoming lemons. The goal: tener alguien
quien me quiera. I want to be my mother singing me
my mother used to make little rice balls
for me. she steamed and clattered about the
cramped mustard kitchen, filling a pot with
water, swelling and salting and songing
I used to liken a poem to praying. Is that right?
Not the woo and gratitude praying served by queer witches.
Childhood praying. As a girl I genuflected to the tabernacle
I've dreamt of you so often that you become unreal.
Is there still time to reach this living body and to kiss on its mouth the birth of
the voice so dear to me?
At first there's no lake in the city, at first there are only
elevators, at first there are only constricting office desks;
there are small apartments and hamburger joints and
— “mu” twenty-eighth part —
On Antiphon Island they lowered
the bar and we bent back. It
wasn't limbo we were in albeit
big ghosts contra
band my diction war
korea's north sees red as
america flags china's chopped limb
british crowns hong kong
cut for duplicity more capitalist than capitalist
Out of their torments men carved a flower
which they perched on the high plateaus of their faces
it’s rank it cranks you up
crash you’re fracked you suck
shucks you’re wack you be
all you cracked up to be
dead on arrival
overdosed on whatever
excess of hate and love
grass is unusual
it was invented by the Romans
unlike most people grass stays where it grows
if grass had gone to the moon it would be there today
because grass looks luxurious
this is the transsensorium
there are indo-robo-women fighting cowboys on the frontier
& winning finally
the premodern is a foundation for the postmodern
wintermute, tessier-ashpool, armitage
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which…
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
In my dream my mother comes with me.
We are in the meadows we call
The Flats, walking the dogs.
Walk straight past the water trough,
she says, do not engage the moss.
I can manage being alone,
can pace out convivial hope
across my managing ground.
Someone might call, later.
What do the dead make of us
that we’d flay ourselves trying
During two hours on the train
I rerun the film of my life
Two minutes per year on average
Half an hour for childhood
Another half-hour for prison
Love, books, wandering
take up the rest
I understand you.
I get what you’re trying to say.
What you’re trying to say is you want me to get it.
I get it. You want me
to understand. You want me to know
You’d have to pay us
Could you pay us enough
To live for a stretch
The place, the question, the question.
The place, the interest, the question.
There is the place.
There is what you do in the place.
There is your belief.
K was supposed to come with the key, I was
to wait outside the gate. I arrived on time,
the time we had agreed on and waited, as agreed,
Both guitars run trebly. One noodles
Over a groove. The other slushes chords.
Then they switch. It’s quite an earnest affair.
i
At the heart there is a hollow sun
by which we are constructed and undone
Praise the rain, the seagull dive
The curl of plant, the raven talk-
Praise the hurt, the house slack
The calendar marred with birds and you are kik-kik-kik-kicking all the way into June.
180 days scratched with black X’s and crow’s feet: bird-of-two minds (goodandevil
…
(a twelve-tone poem)
trite yap show
rosy twit heap
GOODLOOKING BOY wasn’t he / yes/ blond /
yes / I do vaguely
/ you never liked
Very loud a mad frenzy The wooden
barrel she rode would have roared
(I first wrote “road”)
— so we said to the somewhat: Be born —
& the shadow kept arriving in segments,
cold currents pushed minerals
Here at Woodlands, Moriah,
these thirty-five years later,
still I could smell her fear.
Newfoundland is, or was, full of interesting people.
Like Larry, who would make a fool of himself on street corners
for a nickel. There…
What horror to awake at night
and in the dimness see the light.
He wants to be
a brutal old man,
an aggressive old man,
Breathe dust like you breathe wind so strong in your face
little grains of dirt which pock around the cheeks peddling
against a dust-storm…
dont worry yr eyes
dont worry yr brain man th snow is
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
Susie Asado.
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid…
